American heroes (4): William Lloyd Garrison

«He oracularly asserts, in the style of our Fourth-of-July orators, that "a great experiment is now in the making. It is the experiment of human liberty; and if it fails here, all hopes will be taken from the earth. If we cannot suceed, no nation will try again."
This wonderful "experiment" that we are now making is precisely this - to see how long we can plunder, with impunity, two millions and a half of our population; how much labor we can extort with the cart-whip, how near to a level with the brute creation we can reduce every sixth man, woman, and child in the land... "If it fails here", says Dr. B.; but IT HAS FAILED - we are not, we have never been, and while slavery exists we can never be, a free people... and we are rushing down to destruction as fast as time will allow us.»

(William Lloyd Garrison foi um dos líderes dos abolicionistas que pressionaram pela abolição da escravatura; aqui responde, em 1836, aos argumentos de Lyman Beecher, um clérigo presbiteriano.)